life; each makes himself happy in
his own way. Owing to this absence of competition, and the limit placed
on the population, it is difficult for a family to fall into distress;
there are no hazardous speculations, no emulators striving for superior
wealth and rank. No doubt, in each settlement all originally had the
same proportions of land dealt out to them; but some, more adventurous
than others, had extended their possessions farther into the bordering
wilds, or had improved into richer fertility the produce of their
fields, or entered into commerce or trade. Thus, necessarily, some
had grown richer than others, but none had become absolutely poor, or
wanting anything which their tastes desired. If they did so, it was
always in their power to migrate, or at the worst to apply, without
shame and with certainty of aid, to the rich, for all the members of
the community considered themselves as brothers of one affectionate and
united family. More upon this head will be treated of incidentally as my
narrative proceeds.

The chief care of the supreme magistrate was to communicate with certain
active departments charged with the administration of special details.
The most important and essential of such details was that connected with
the due provision of light. Of this department my host, Aph-Lin, was
the chief. Another department, which might be called the foreign,
communicated with the neighbouring kindred states, principally for the
purpose of ascertaining all new inventions; and to a third department
all such inventions and improvements in machinery were committed for
trial. Connected with this department was the College of Sages--a
college especially favoured by such of the Ana as were widowed and
childless, and by the young unmarried females, amongst whom Zee was
the most active, and, if what we call renown or distinction was a thing
acknowledged by this people (which I shall later show it is not), among
the more renowned or distinguished. It is by the female Professors
of this College that those studies which are deemed of least use in
practical life--as purely speculative philosophy, the history of remote
periods, and such sciences as entomology, conchology, &c.--are the more
diligently cultivated. Zee, whose mind, active as Aristotle's, equally
embraced the largest domains and the minutest details of thought, had
written two volumes on the parasite insect that dwells amid the hairs
of a tiger's* paw, which work wa